Scan and changing the format

[fred the great]

My wife has a business card made outside with a picture and text on the front and a little map and text on the reverse. I can scan this and save as a  PDF file. For Cards I use Serif Page Plus. I would like to scan so that I can revise the text, also delete the picture and insert a new one. So far I have failed miserably to find a method to do it. I can copy the card to Page Plus but can't modify it.

Word messes up the text 'cos some of it is in Thai.

Any idea which Programme may solve my headache?

[Ian H]

A scan will always just be a picture. You would have to modify it by adding text, for which you would need the appropriate fonts. Most if not all graphics software will allow you to add text.

[fred the great]

But, the text is already there and  is a picture as such. I need to revise it from a picture to actual text which I can play with hopefully

[Craig]

You need some OCR software. It will recognise what is actually text, and allow you to edit it.
I've done this using ABBYY Finereader - it can scan to a MS Word, with the text as text and the images separately. But its not exactly cheap. You may have got some OCR software bundled with your scanner.

If its just a business card I suspect it will be easier and quicker to just start from scratch, scanning the individual pictures if needed, and just typing in the text.

[Ian H]

You need some OCR software. It will recognise what is actually text, and allow you to edit it.

You still need the font(s). Unless there's loads of text, and it's easily recognisable (eg. black on white) it'll be easier to re-type.

[pcolbeck]

Forget about the text. When you scan something you just get a simple picture with no layers or text objects that you can edit its just a simple picture of the whole card.

If the card is relatively simple you scan it to a BMP rather than a PDF then using a paint tool clone an area of the card with no text and use that to paint out the text. Next use the text tool in the graphics program to add new text.

[fred the great]

It seems to be an near impossible task. Most of the text is in Thai hence the easiest way to go is to start again. With Serif Page Plus I can use Microshaft fonts or Thai. (but I don't write Thai).

Will have a look at OCR software and if my new scanner has it.

[andygates]

If you don't write Thai, how are you going to meaningfully change the text? 

In a case like this, I'd scan the picture part as a TIFF, then create an entirely new document (Word would do, Pageplus would rock) using the image and new text of my own devising. 

Of course, if the text overlays the pic in pretty ways, you're probably hosed.

[pcolbeck]

It seems to be an near impossible task. Most of the text is in Thai hence the easiest way to go is to start again. With Serif Page Plus I can use Microshaft fonts or Thai. (but I don't write Thai).

Will have a look at OCR software and if my new scanner has it.

OCR software will grab the text but it will just give you a document with the text in it. It will loose the background picture. You might as well start again with the text.

Actually some of the commercial OCR applications will preserve picture as well but they are really expensive and you would need one that support Thai. Non of the cheap or freeware ones will do it so far as I know.
Tesseract which is an OCR engine developed by HP in the 90s who's source code was then released as open source is actually quite good for scanning printed or typed documents (I think it rated in the top 3 OCR engines back in the mid 1990s when it was developed and it has been tweaked since then). This is now the backend used in several free projects and is still being developed today.

[fred the great]

If you don't write Thai, how are you going to meaningfully change the text? 

In a case like this, I'd scan the picture part as a TIFF, then create an entirely new document (Word would do, Pageplus would rock) using the image and new text of my own devising. 

Of course, if the text overlays the pic in pretty ways, you're probably hosed.

My wife is Thai so she can make any changes as and when needed. I just need the facility to be able to do it starting with a scan.

I can cope with the picture and English text myself and likewise I just need the facility to be able to delete it and replace it.

I hope that clarifies my wish.

Incidentally Page Plus is great for making Business Cards and similar and there is no issue with fonts as someone mentioned above.